LEANER AND MEANER

African countries have historically played an important role in international peacekeeping. Like other poor nations, they have been willing and able to provide sizeable contingents for United Nations peacekeeping operations, thus increasing the geographical spread of troop contributors and enhancing the representivity, perceived impartiality and legitimacy of such missions. While this role is still fulfilled in a few ongoing UN observer and police missions, African states are now more likely to be called upon to organise and sustain their own peace support operations for dealing with local and regional conflicts in Africa.1 The fact that the ability of ailing states in Africa to comply with such demands is severely limited seems to be ignored by an increasingly vocal chorus of ‘African solutions for African problems’. Such solutions, in the realm of peace support, amount to what Hutchful has described as ‘lean peacekeeping’ — missions that operate under suboptimal conditions that would not normally support military operations.2

The ‘crisis’ in African peacekeeping is often ascribed to the ‘Somalia’ effect, or Western disenchantment with the failure of new generation peace operations in Africa. Although such failures may have led to a measure of ‘Africa fatigue’, they also highlight problems of command and control of international forces and the limits of multilateralism.3 Unlike the relatively benign environment of classical peacekeeping, contemporary forceful interventions have demanded a strong lead nation for success, and multilateralism has rapidly dissipated from the level of Security Council resolutions towards national conceptions of command and control at the operational and tactical levels. Where contributions to international peace and security have required nations to pay a heavy price (particularly in resources and lives), multilateralism has given way to more salient domestic political interests.

Since the early 1990s, there has thus been little support for conducting new missions which lean towards ‘peace enforcement’, and it is apparent that the UN is no longer prepared to contemplate complex interventions that may require the use of force. In fact, there are very few current UN missions that involve military unit-sized (battalion-level) contributions.4 This reality is reflected in the declining global number of UN peacekeepers. While the number of troops deployed on UN operations ballooned from 10 000 in 1989 to 70 000 in 1995, this number has dwindled over the past three years to about 14 000 at present, and will probably remain around these levels for the foreseeable future. Today, there are less than 2 000 UN peacekeepers deployed in Africa, in stark contrast to almost 40 000 in 1993.

Of course, there are moves afoot to improve the efficacy of multinational peace operations through structural reforms to the UN Secretariat and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). Implicitly, enthusiasm for participation in UN peacekeeping should improve with increases in efficiency and effectiveness. Reform proposals have been backed by schemes such as the Danish-initiated UN Standby High-Readiness Brigade (SHIRBRIG) and other ‘peacekeeping capacity-building’ initiatives ostensibly aimed at strengthening contributions to the UN system of peace operations. But none of these are designed to cope with modalities for non-consensual interventions that must be backed by a strong military posture and a willingness to employ force.

On the other hand, the decline in the number of UN peacekeepers has been accompanied by an increase in the number of non-UN ‘peacekeeping’ missions. With the UN increasingly focused on much smaller and more specialised monitoring and peacebuilding missions, the Security Council has ‘delegated’ the large-scale, personnel intensive functions to regional organisations and arrangements, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in the Balkans and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in West Africa. This is especially the case when peace support operations take on a strong enforcement flavour.

Africa has been an integral part of the post-1995 global trend towards a reduction in UN peacekeeping, and there is no reason why this should not be so. However, the consequences of UN withdrawal tend to be rather more dramatic when there is no viable organisation to step into the breach, as NATO did in Bosnia. This is well illustrated in the recent ignominious UN retreat from Angola, and the subsequent abandonment of that country to yet another round of bloody civil war.

The UN Mission of Observers in Angola (MONUA) was established on 30 June 1997, as a follow-on mission to two prior inconclusive UN engagements. The mission was clearly a futile attempt to ‘do more with less’, and it never really stood a chance of successful mandate implementation. By the end of 1998, the UN began to think seriously of withdrawing. The downing of two UN aircraft over Angola (on 26 December 1998 and 2 January 1999) was regarded as a particularly outrageous crime intended to intimidate the UN and force it to curtail its operations.

On 17 January 1999, Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported to the Security Council that the peace process had collapsed, and that Angola had returned to war: "The conditions for the UN as a meaningful peacekeeper have ceased to exist."5 The withdrawal of MONUA marked the end of a decade of UN military presence in Angola, and has probably also signalled the end of large-scale UN peacekeeping commitments in Africa. Perhaps Annan’s words have wider application to the African continent, where the nature of present conflicts dictates that the conditions for the UN as a meaningful peacekeeper have indeed ceased to exist. The Organisation now has only three small missions in Africa: in the Central African Republic (CAR), in Western Sahara and in Sierra Leone.

Some observers noted a revival in UN peacekeeping in Africa when, on 27 March 1998, the Security Council approved the creation of the UN Mission in the Central African Republic (MINURCA). Created for the purpose of "... providing security long enough for the Government of the CAR to undertake the reforms it had promised", MINURCA officially took over from the Mission for the Implementation for the Bangui Accords (MISAB) coalition on 15 April 1998.6 While this occasion marked the establishment of the first UN peacekeeping force in over two years, it was more a transfer of responsibility for an existing mission than a revival of UN peacekeeping in Africa.7 The mission should remain in place at least until the presidential elections, scheduled to take place in two rounds during August and September 1999.

The UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) became operational in September 1991, once a cease-fire between Moroccan forces and the secessionist Polisario Front came into effect. Since then, the cease-fire has generally held — although the mandate of the small UN mission extended way beyond this to include the organisation and supervision of a free and fair referendum on the political future of the territory. MINURSO has been an electoral monitoring, rather than a true ‘peacekeeping’ mission, and it is conceptually far removed from the doctrinal debate on the future of peacekeeping in Africa.8 After repeated delays and setbacks, there is some optimism that the settlement process will be concluded by July 2000, thus further reducing the limited UN military presence in Africa.9

In June 1998, the Security Council established the UN Observer Mission to Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) for an initial period of six months. By the end of August 1998, UNOMSIL had completed the first phase of the deployment of its military component, consisting of forty military observers, a Chief Military Observer and a medical team of fifteen personnel.10 The mission was established to help in national reconciliation and the demobilisation of former soldiers following the restoration of the government of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah in March 1998. But the mission’s task remained elusive as the junta and its allied forces dislodged from power took up arms against the restored democratically elected government.

No meaningful progress could be made towards this mandate in a highly unstable security environment. Indeed, on 6 January 1999, rebel fighters belonging to the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked Freetown. The fighting resulted in the deaths of between 3 000 and 5 000 persons, including rebel fighters, ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG)11 soldiers and large numbers of civilians. Up to 150 000 people were displaced in and around Freetown, and the rebels burnt down large numbers of public buildings and homes. ECOMOG forces eventually managed to expel the rebels and regain control of the city. However, UNOMSIL had evacuated all its international personnel, many of its vehicles and much of its equipment immediately prior to the 6 January attack. The relocation to Conakry in Guinea was followed by a substantial reduction in the number of staff, in particular military and civilian police. As of 1 March 1999, the mission comprised only nine civilian and military personnel under the leadership of the Special Representative of Secretary-General (SRSG).12

On 12 January 1999, following the assault on Freetown, the Security Council extended the mandate of UNOMSIL for a further month only, expressing deep concern over the deterioration of the security situation and requesting the Secretary-General to submit recommendations on the future deployment of UNOMSIL.13 On 4 March 1999, Annan complied, recommending to the Council that UNOMSIL should "... remain in a position where it is capable of rendering further assistance to the peace process", and that the mandate should be extended for a further period of three months until 13 June 1999.14 The Secretary-General also indicated his intention to re-establish UNOMSIL in Freetown as soon as possible, and to increase the number of military observers from eight to fourteen, while the remaining staff would stay in Conakry until the security situation is considered acceptable.15

Thus, while the UNOMSIL mission has been granted a short reprieve, it must be considered a ‘lame duck’ UN presence, of minor significance next to the regional ECOMOG force. This situation mirrors a trend that started with the ECOMOG intervention in Liberia (with a token UN observer mission added for legitimisation), and which is perpetuated in the current intervention in Sierra Leone.

The history of the ECOWAS intervention in Liberia has been extensively analysed elsewhere, and will not be covered in detail here.16 Suffice it to say that the precedent for devolving ‘peacekeeping’ responsibilities in Africa was set when ECOWAS intervened in a conflict which began in Liberia late in 1989. A small force of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front for the Liberation of Liberia (NPFL) invaded the country from Sierra Leone in an attempt to bring down the then president Samuel Doe. This incursion soon degenerated into a many-sided factional war that split the country into fiefdoms with no overall control.

By early 1990, several hundred deaths had already occurred in confrontations between government forces and fighters of the NPFL. The civil war subsequently claimed the lives of between 100 000 and 150 000 civilians and led to a complete breakdown of law and order in the tiny country of some 2,3 million inhabitants. It displaced thousands of people, both internally and beyond the borders, resulting in approximately 700 000 refugees in neighbouring countries.

From the outset of the conflict, ECOWAS undertook various initiatives aimed at a peaceful settlement — including the creation of a Military Observer Group (ECOMOG) in August 1990. ECOMOG initially comprised about 4 000 troops from The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone (as ECOMOG became drawn into the fighting, the force was later to reach a maximum strength of nearly 12 000). ECOWAS efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement in Liberia included the mediation of a series of agreements that became the basis for the shifting mandates of ECOMOG. On 30 October 1991, ECOWAS brokered the Yamoussoukro IV Accord which outlined steps to implement a peace plan that included the encampment and disarmament of warring factions under the supervision of an expanded ECOMOG, as well as the establishment of transitional institutions to carry out free and fair elections. However, the West African force lacked the capacity, resources and credibility to implement this ambitious peace plan.

From the beginning, the ECOMOG operation in Liberia was beset by problems with military equipment, logistics, training and interoperability. Units initially landed without intelligence or military maps of Monrovia, some without their personal weapons, inadequate supply of boots and uniforms, and lacking adequate logistics.17 Some of these problems persisted: eight years into the operation, ECOMOG commander General Shelpidi identified "... differences in language, training, equipment and orientation" as key operational problems within ECOMOG.18 But similar problems have plagued many less controversial UN missions. More pertinent were allegations against ECOMOG of partiality, brutality and corruption.

The impartiality of the force has always been questionable. Taylor regarded ECOMOG as the tool of Nigeria, which had assisted former dictator Samuel Doe, both economically and militarily. Taylor was convinced that Nigeria’s military regime intended to use ECOMOG to frustrate his attempt to achieve power and was forcing other countries participating in the operation to toe the Nigerian line. This obviously played a key role in Taylor’s sabotage of a number of peace agreements, and led to divisions within the ECOMOG mission itself. The tortuous relationship between Taylor and Nigeria, on the one hand, and Nigeria and its ECOMOG partners on the other, illustrates one of the key difficulties with the concept of ‘backyard peacekeeping’.19

There were also many reports (including several from within the force itself) alleging ECOMOG involvement in looting and illicit mining activities. There were also instances of corruption in the administration of the ECOMOG armed forces in the field. Indeed, the difference between the official and warlord armies became blurred over time as ECOMOG units in turn cultivated their own warlords (or stimulated ethnic rivalries) to counterattack Taylor’s forces.20

Although a small UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) was established in September 1993, it played a definite second fiddle to ECOMOG and Nigeria.21 In its four years of deployment, UNOMIL suffered no fatalities, while the only significant outside assistance for the West African effort, before the establishment of UNOMIL, was about US $30 million from the US. By contrast, ECOMOG cost Nigeria more than US $1 billion — and 500 lives. Even in the diplomatic field, ECOMOG took the lead in brokering an astonishing number of failed agreements among the belligerents.

It took ECOWAS five years to broker a thirteenth peace agreement in August 1995, which was widely believed to have a real chance of success. It was the first accord to involve all the factions (by this stage, there were nine major belligerent parties), and it also had the support of other political organisations and civic organisations.22 However, on 6 April 1996, Monrovia erupted in bloody conflict when police attempted to arrest Roosevelt Johnson, a former leader of a faction of the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO) known as ULIMO-J. The carnage involved civilians and children, and forced the evacuation of virtually all the humanitarian relief workers from the former safe haven which had provided shelter for up to one million people. ECOMOG stood by helplessly as warlords looted their offices and supplies. When ECOMOG troops eventually managed to separate the armed factions and gain a measure of control over the city in June 1996, health workers recovered more than 1 500 bodies from shallow graves.23

In the wake of this catastrophe, Taylor reached a rapprochement with the Nigerian ruler, General Sani Abacha, and attended a peace conference in Abuja that finally paved the way for elections to be held on 19 July 1997. In an ironic outcome, Charles Taylor won the presidential vote hands down. The UN, of course, welcomed the success of the elections and the Security Council called upon all parties to abide by the results and to co-operate in the formation of a new government. It also called upon the new government to protect the ‘democratic’ system and to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms under the rule of law.24

The ECOMOG initiative represents the first time that a regional body had intervened to stop a conflict in its own region, and there is little disagreement that the military and political actions of ECOWAS saved many lives — at considerable cost to the member states. The operation was one of the largest in the world, and from 1990 to the end of 1995 (when the NATO-led IFOR took over from UNPROFOR in Bosnia), the only major peacekeeping effort not run by the UN. For the people of Liberia, however, only time will tell the difference between Taylor, the former warlord and Taylor, the President of Liberia. It has also been said that the same result could have been achieved with less bloodshed and at far less cost if Taylor had simply been allowed to seize power in 1990. As Magyar has stated:

"If a single, overarching question concerning ECOMOG’s history of active intervention since mid-1990 in Liberia’s civil war may be formulated, it would ask: Had ECOMOG not been constituted at all, would the war in Liberia have ended a long time ago, and would the massive number of deaths and casualties, and the dislocation, destruction, and deleterious regional consequences have been avoided — or at least greatly reduced?"25 (Similar questions are already being posed about NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia.)

With the jury still out on this issue, ECOMOG was propelled into a second major intervention in Sierra Leone. The war in Sierra Leone spilled over from Liberia, when Charles Taylor armed a group of dissident Sierra Leoneans to hit back at the Freetown government for allowing its territory to be used by Nigerian planes on bombing missions against his forces. Led by former army corporal Foday Sankoh, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) overran government forces and reached the outskirts of the capital in early 1995. As in Liberia, anarchic conditions soon prevailed, and the war claimed more than 10 000 lives in a relatively short space of time — without any action being taken by the UN Security Council.26

Instead of the usual ‘UN prescribed’ pattern of cease-fire, peace agreement, disarmament, demobilisation, and then elections, the ‘peace process’ in Sierra Leone began with the staging of elections. The people of Sierra Leone went to the polls on 26 and 27 February 1996, before there was any sign of a cease-fire or peace agreement. While the UN vacillated, Sierra Leone had to rely on the assistance of a diverse agglomeration of unco-ordinated actors, each with their own agendas. These have included the US government, the Nigerian government, the International Monetary Fund, and a variety of UN agencies such as the World Food Programme, Children’s Fund, UN Development Programme and the World Health Organisation. Military advice and assistance have been provided firstly by the Gurkha Support group, then by Executive Outcomes, and later by a Nigerian Army Training Assistance Group (NATAG). In April 1997, Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom signed an agreement under which British military experts were to train two battalions of the Sierra Leone army.

Sierra Leone’s short-lived experiment with democracy was terminated on 25 May 1997, when President Kabbah was ousted in a typical ‘palace coup’. The UN responded with an immediate condemnation of the takeover, with the Secretary-General reiterating that the UN and the international community firmly uphold the principle that the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of governments and that governments, democratically elected, shall not be overthrown by force.27

On 26 May 1997, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) also condemned the coup and called for an immediate restoration of the constitutional order, urging the leaders of ECOWAS to take immediate action against the coup-makers.28 Nigeria was quick to react to the challenge with a naval bombardment of Freetown, followed by ground assaults and air strikes some weeks later — all under the auspices of ECOMOG, and without Chapter VII authorisation by the UN Security Council.

Subsequently, the ‘peace process’ in Sierra Leone, which led to the reinstatement of President Kabbah in March 1998, has been characterised by a bloody but inconclusive enforcement engagement. In response to an attack by junta forces, ECOMOG launched an attack in February 1998, that led to the collapse of the junta and its expulsion from Freetown. ECOMOG then expanded its force deployment in an attempt to secure the rest of the country. On 10 March 1998, President Kabbah was returned to office.

On 17 April 1998, the Security Council commended ECOMOG on its important role in supporting the restoration of peace and security in Sierra Leone, and authorised the deployment, with immediate effect, of up to ten UN military liaison and security advisory personnel. However, ECOMOG has not been able to stamp its authority on the hinterland beyond Freetown, and rebels have continued terrorising and brutalising the civilian population. As mentioned above, the small UNOMSIL mission is all but ineffective and, despite the deployment of some 17 000 ECOMOG troops in and around Freetown, the rebels still control the majority of the hinterland and continue to pose a threat to the capital itself. At the time of writing, a military victory for the government seems unlikely, and there is no exit strategy for ECOMOG in sight.

Despite the problems of ECOMOG peacekeeping, the latter has been ‘legitimised’ in both Liberia and Sierra Leone by supportive ex post facto Security Council resolutions, the co-deployment of UN observer missions, and the overt support of major donor countries. The same cannot be said for the type of intervention that has begun to emerge in Central and Southern Africa.

Established for the purpose of harmonising subregional economic policies, the Southern African Development Community (SADC)29 has increasingly come to be regarded as a security arrangement of the type envisaged under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.30 Over the past few years, the organisation has entered areas far removed from that of development co-ordination and facilitation, and Africa and the rest of the international community have expressed great hopes that SADC will play a similar role to that of ECOWAS in peacekeeping endeavours in sub-Saharan Africa.

However, SADC’s response to the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has created (or perhaps revealed) serious tensions among key members of the fourteen-nation body. The prevailing situation bodes ill for the Southern African organisation’s ability to act in concert, according to acceptable guidelines, in conflict management and the promotion of regional peace and security.

When war again broke out in the DRC in August 1998, the appointed chairman of the SADC Organ for Politics Defence and Security, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, was the first to defend Kabila’s regime with military forces. Angola, fighting its own rebels who use the DRC’s territory, soon followed suit, as did neighbouring Namibia. The involvement of the three SADC states was endorsed at a meeting of SADC defence ministers in Harare on 18 August 1998. On the other hand, South Africa remained aloof from the fray, with SADC Chairperson Nelson Mandela espousing the need for dialogue and a negotiated settlement to the conflict.31

Mugabe claimed that SADC had come to a ‘unanimous’ decision to help Kabila. Mandela publicly reprimanded Mugabe for his inflammatory talk, and called upon SADC countries rather to work towards a peaceful settlement. An emergency summit of SADC leaders was convened in Pretoria on 23 August 1998. The leaders present decided to confirm their recognition of the legitimacy of the government of the DRC and to call for an immediate cease-fire, to be followed by political dialogue on a peaceful settlement to the crisis.

On 3 September, however, President Mandela surprised observers by announcing at a press conference that SADC had unanimously supported the military intervention by its member states in the DRC.32 This announcement paved the way for a diverse series of regional meetings, involving both SADC and non-SADC players, that were intended to halt the conflict in the DRC.33 No progress was made, before the 18th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Mauritius on 13 and 14 September 1998. The Summit

Shortly afterwards, military forces from at least ten countries and three subregions of Africa began mobilising for a major battle in the eastern DRC.35 While the war for control of the DRC drags on amidst a plethora of failed peace initiatives, the identification of the ‘good guys’ remains a moot point, and there must be some doubt whether or not the survival of Kabila’s regime is worth any form of external military intervention — by SADC forces or anyone else. With Kabila celebrating two years in power with a ‘forced parade’ on 17 May 1999, a human rights group in his country released a statement that characterised his rule as one of violence and disintegration. After noting that at least 46 people had been executed (after conviction in unfair trials by a military court) between April and May 1999, Amnesty International stated on 19 May 1999 that "[t]he people of the DRC are being subjected to extreme brutality and disregard for human life."36

While the situation in the DRC and the renewed war in Angola continue to dominate the regional security debate in Southern Africa, SADC has also had to contend with a smaller ‘multilateral’ intervention of dubious legality in one of its member states. On 22 September 1998, a 600-strong South African military task force entered Lesotho, ostensibly to assist the Lesotho government in restoring law and order following election-related unrest. Although official South African National Defence Force (SANDF) communications stressed that this was a combined SADC military task force, consisting of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) and SANDF elements, it was not before nightfall on 22 September that about 200 BDF troops arrived in Maseru. This was after the SANDF had been engaged, throughout the day, in combat operations against the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF).37

Operation Boleas, as the mission was dubbed, had its roots in the dissatisfaction of opposition political parties in Lesotho which demanded that King Letsie III used his powers to dismantle the parliament, since they believed that it had been fraudulently elected.38 In the light of this, mutinous members of the LDF seized arms and ammunition and expelled or imprisoned their commanding officers. Government vehicles were hijacked, the broadcasting station was closed and the Prime Minister and other ministers were virtually held hostage. The Lesotho police had lost control of the situation, and the SANDF was convinced that a military coup was being planned.39

According to official statements, the mission of the combined task force was "... to intervene militarily in Lesotho to prevent any further anarchy and to create a stable environment for the restoration of law and order."40 The concept of operations was described as "[t]he deployment of forces in order to locate and identify destabilisers and destabiliser resources, to disarm and contain them and to strike where applicable with the necessary force to eliminate the threat."41 The aim of the operation was to create a stable environment in Lesotho, and to restore law and order to enable negotiations to take place between the political parties in Lesotho.42 At least as far as the aim was concerned, it would appear that Operation Boleas was some type of peace enforcement action, but the concept of operations points to considerable doctrinal confusion in this regard.

The operation was anything but peaceful, with the SANDF encountering much stiffer LDF resistance than expected. Most of the fighting took place on the first day, and the disaffected inhabitants lost no time in engaging in a destructive looting binge in the capital city of Maseru. The situation was described by one journalist as follows:

"Burning and smoldering buildings. Indiscriminate and unchecked arson and looting. At least 66 people killed. A once-thriving city practically destroyed. These were the costs of this week’s SA-led ‘peacekeeping’ mission to Lesotho following almost two months of [relatively peaceful] protests by opposition parties against the results of the mountain kingdom’s May elections."43

While there was a marked lack of international condemnation of the incursion, the South African media generally questioned the framework or ambit within which it was decided to intervene in Lesotho and maintained that Pretoria had resorted too readily to forceful intervention. Efforts to find a negotiated political settlement in Lesotho had not been exhausted and the enforcement action did not reflect an approach that elevates persuasion, conciliation and non-violent coercion above the use of force.

From a purely military perspective, it may be argued that Operation Boleas was successful, as it did succeed in stabilising the security situation in Lesotho and in safeguarding South Africa’s interests in that country. However, from a political perspective, South Africa involved itself in the internal politics of Lesotho and it is yet to be seen whether the operation has paved the way for fresh elections that will lead to long-term political stability. Moreover, the intervention in Lesotho, as well as the one in the DRC, have highlighted the fact that there is a great deal of confusion over what may or may not be legitimately accomplished in the realm of conflict resolution under the auspices of SADC. And there is even greater confusion in establishing when SADC is acting in concert, and when one or two member states act unilaterally and then claim to be acting on behalf of the Community.

It is also evident that subregional operations — such as those conducted by SADC in the DRC and by ECOMOG in West Africa — have created a great deal of discontent among the domestic constituencies of the governments that contribute to the intervention forces. Even when casualty figures are disguised or distorted (as they have been in many cases), the economic burden of such operations has made them extremely controversial. Such operations have been sustained only because leaders are used to ignoring public opinion, and the perpetuation of this type of ‘peacekeeping’ can only inhibit the process of democratisation in troop-contributing countries.44 The practice of resorting to ad hoc arrangements for carrying out military enforcement actions will also contribute little to the building of international institutions or to the reinforcing of the international legal order.45

Both ECOMOG and SADC have pursued overtly political objectives (regional stability) as the rationale for intervention. Neither organisation has yet laid claim to the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds, and this motive has been remarkably absent from the security debate on a continent where humanitarian needs are so poignant. This is contrary to broader international thinking on reasons for broadening the concept of peace support to include forceful multinational interventions.

With the growing recognition of the importance of human security over state security, it is inevitable that humanitarian concerns will also be prominent in external armed interventions in the internal affairs of UN member states. Indeed, many of the civilian actors in peace missions will be attending to humanitarian concerns, and their work may be motivated by a singular desire to alleviate human suffering, rather than to contribute to the overall peace process.46 It has also been felt that the military has a distinct role to play in the conduct of ‘humanitarian operations’, defined as operations conducted to relieve human suffering, especially in circumstances where responsible authorities in the area are unable, or possibly unwilling to provide adequate service support to the population.

However, there is a great deal of tension between the (state-centric) rules of world order as prescribed in the UN Charter and the rights of individuals as prescribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments. Whereas the former prohibits the forceful violation of state sovereignty, the latter guarantees the rights of individuals against oppressive regimes. It is this tension that has provided the rationale for so-called ‘humanitarian intervention’, or the launching of ‘humanitarian operations’ in a number of contemporary internal wars.47 According to Chomsky, this right of humanitarian intervention (if it indeed exists through international custom and practice) cannot be based on rhetoric, but depends on the record of the interventionists for proof of good faith.48 And very few would-be humanitarian interventionists can stand scrutiny in this area.49

All peace missions have a political aim, though the will to launch them may be summonsed through a strong humanitarian imperative. To define a particular intervention as a ‘humanitarian operation’ would be to confuse short-term motives with longer term goals. It is therefore both possible and desirable to place humanitarian assistance (provided in response to the effects of armed conflict) squarely within the ambit of ‘peace operations’ — whether such assistance is provided within the context of ‘preventive diplomacy’, ‘peacemaking’, ‘peacekeeping’, ‘peace enforcement’, or ‘peacebuilding’. In fact, the humanitarian imperative should rightly underlie all of the above processes.

However, much of the current humanitarian activity in Africa is not really linked to any integrated peace process — rather, it is being conducted in a political vacuum. International aid agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) lack the power and organisational structure needed to conduct operations in situations of ongoing conflict. The aid that they have brought to Africa often becomes a resource which further serves to fuel, rather than resolve armed conflict. Food and money, in the absence of troops and diplomatic pressure, have become important components in the tactics of local belligerents, as the UN and other aid agencies increasingly operate in a political, military and diplomatic vacuum.50

During March 1997, for example, Kabila’s rebel forces obtained the fuel needed to airlift troops for an attack on the key southern city of Lubumbashi from a depot maintained by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Goma. More than 15 000 gallons of fuel were seized to ferry 300 troops and their weapons southward for the successful assault on Lubumbashi on 9 April 1997. In addition to stolen aid fuel, Kabila’s army also relied on stolen aid trucks for transport and stolen aid food for sustenance. Likewise, Mobutu’s army hijacked UN-chartered aircraft to transport weapons for its futile fight against the rebels. The planes flew into UN-run refugee camps, where the arms were distributed to Rwandan Hutu refugees who had become Mobutu’s first line of defence.51

"The burden of caring is being privatised ... today there is a plethora of agencies, UN, bilateral, international NGOs, national NGOs, and human rights groups, operating on the ground, all believing they have a legitimate right to provide their unique brand of assistance and protection to those in need. Alongside of these, intervening military forces extend the definition of peace-keeping, and slowly but surely commercial enterprises see a new product — relief aid — and a new market — donors hungry for profile — into which they can step."52

In 1995, one study counted 28 900 non-governmental aid agencies operating in at least three different countries. Major NGOs such as CARE, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, Médecins sans frontières and World Vision, as well as many lesser known organisations, have been in the frontline of relieving desperate human suffering in Africa. However, many other NGOs are fly-by-night outfits. Of the 170 aid agencies working in Rwanda during 1995, for example, one-third were unfamiliar to an interagency team that was tasked to monitor relief activity.53

While humanitarian action may have become the substitute for UN peacekeeping, humanitarian agencies cannot function in anarchic conditions, and they have an understandable preoccupation with security. According to Minear, "humanitarian activities need reasonable security, which only political and military actors can provide ..."54 However, multinational forces engaged in international peacekeeping have not excelled in the provision of such security. In 1995, for example, the UN had to hire two battalions of Zairian soldiers to provide military security to its refugee camps in Rwanda.55

This January, CARE Canada released a report entitled Mean times: Humanitarian action in complex political emergencies — Stark choices, cruel dilemmas. The report focuses on what NGOs should and should not do during major violent humanitarian crises such as those in Rwanda, Somalia, the former Zaire and Sierra Leone. Mean times notes that humanitarian organisations and NGOs work under conditions where there is an increased unwillingness by national and international government to engage in political-military action. It suggests that, in the absence of publicly funded security, serious consideration should be given to the possibility of engaging private military forces. The report adds that humanitarian NGOs should be willing and able to withdraw their services when it is clear beyond a doubt that disengagement is the option that would cause the least harm to victimised populations.56 When international agencies and NGOs meet the needs of civilian populations, this frees warring governments and opposition forces to use their resources for war-making. Intergroup tensions are also increased when NGOs provide external resources to some groups and not to others, or where they hire workers from certain groups to the exclusion of others.57

"We need a rationale for humanitarian intervention not dependent on TV images and the mood of the moment. It has to start with human rights, the prohibition against genocide, and the Geneva Conventions, which lay out clear guidelines for civilians caught in conflict. These universal standards were massively abused before or during every recent crisis. If governments were to enforce these laws, as they are obliged to do, there would be less unpredictability about their humanitarian response."58

The time is ripe, therefore, for a broad and candid international dialogue on the purposes of intervention, the principles that should guide it, and the strengths and weaknesses of existing instruments.

Ironically, the most dramatic peacekeeping capacity-building initiative in Africa to date was ostensibly designed to provide an effective instrument for humanitarian interventions. During October 1996, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher travelled to Africa to promote a proposal to set up an all-African military force. The African Crisis Response Force (ACRF), as it was then known, was to be used to deal with African crises where insurrections, civil war or genocide threatened mass civilian casualties. The purpose of the proposed force was not to intervene in hostilities, but rather to protect designated safe areas where civilians could gather to receive protection and humanitarian assistance. The intermediate objective of the ACRF was to develop a rapid reaction capability for such contingencies. It was hoped that the ACRF would be used for humanitarian intervention in Burundi.

However, this ‘quick fix’ proposal was met with widespread scepticism both in Africa and the US. In response to the criticism, the US transformed the idea of an African intervention force into a longer term capacity-building initiative. By mid-1997, the original ACRF idea had evolved quite significantly into the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI). According to the US State Department, ACRI is a "... training program which envisions a partnership with African and other interested nations to enhance African peacekeeping capacities, particularly the capacity to mount an effective, collective response to humanitarian and other crises."59 This goal is to be achieved through co-ordinated efforts to increase interoperability among African military units earmarked for future peacekeeping duties through training, joint exercises, and the development of common peacekeeping doctrine.

With less than 2 000 UN peacekeepers currently deployed in Africa (over half of whom are Africans), and more than 25 000 African soldiers deployed in regional peace support engagements (if one includes the SADC Task Force and its allies in the DRC), it is small wonder that external powers are increasingly preoccupied with ‘building African peacekeeping capacity’. Britain and France, alongside the ACRI, have taken the lead in providing and sponsoring peacekeeping training for African military contingents, and for supplying such contingents with ‘non-lethal’ military equipment for use in peace support. Such training has recently culminated in a number of large, multinational regional peacekeeping exercises.

For example, Senegal hosted a ten-day peacekeeping exercise named Guidimakha at the end of February 1998. African forces made up the bulk of the 3 700 troops, while France provided trainers and logistics.60 From 15-22 April 1998, another West African peacekeeping exercise, Cohesion Compienga 98, took place, involving some 4 000 troops from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Togo.61 Shortly thereafter, a further regional peacekeeping exercise was hosted by Kenya in June 1998, involving some 2 000 combat troops from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.62 Despite the continuing wars in Angola and the DRC, South Africa hosted a similar exercise dubbed Blue Crane in April 1999, involving some 4 700 soldiers from SADC countries.

Most of these training initiatives, based on ‘UN peacekeeping doctrine’, seem irrelevant in relation to the African security environment in the late 1990s. While the international community is unlikely to intervene on a grand scale to solve conflicts in Africa, non-Africans need to rethink the nature of the assistance that they provide to African states. The current approach — the teaching of peacekeeping which is dependent on consent, impartiality and the non-use of force — will clearly not help to resolve conflicts where local security concerns and the wider political interests of states take precedence. This has proved true not only in West Africa, but also in the Southern African region.

The ease with which the ACRI and other foreign training initiatives have apparently resolved the doctrinal dilemmas associated with training for contemporary multinational peace operations must be questioned. Reference to training ‘in accordance with ACRI and UN standards’ is problematic, as is the claim that the ACRI has accomplished ‘universal integration of tactics, training, and doctrine fused together to form one standard’. Skirting around the doctrinal debate is one way of moving ahead with basic infantry training, but this may have some unintended and unpalatable consequences. One basic fact is that the African brand of ‘peacekeeping’ is a hazardous and seemingly irrational occupation. As Magyar has observed:

"In 1996, six years after the introduction of ECOMOG troops into Liberia, over 100 ECOMOG troops lost their lives in only a three week period of renewed fighting over the control of Monrovia. Surely this alone should attest to the inherent limitations (and existential absurdity) of external peacekeeping forces sacrificing their lives in a dispute ... [which does] not in the least concern these peacekeepers’ direct personal interests."63

" ... given the many problems and weaknesses that characterise African armies, focusing on ‘raising the peacekeeping capacity’ of African armies seems an excessively narrow, and ultimately futile, agenda. The notion of plucking a few units out of otherwise decaying military institutions and elevating them into ‘centres of excellence’ for the purpose of executing peacekeeping tasks seems to me somewhat quixotic."64

This raises the whole issue of African security sector reform, which presents a more daunting and meaningful challenge than ‘building peacekeeping capacity’. The development of effective and accountable criminal justice systems, the demilitarisation of societies, and the true professionalisation of armed forces remain the keys to stability and security. These issues need to be placed at the centre of the contemporary peacebuilding debate. But more pertinent to the subject at hand is the fact that:

"Enforcement, especially if it involves military force, poses high stakes: it is a test of will in which values, lives, wealth, resources, and reputation are at risk. It needs to be done right, if it is to be done at all. The machinery of enforcement should be first rate, up to date, and world class."65

It is highly unlikely that such standards will ever be met in all-African enforcement operations. And this begs the question whether or not there is any credibility or legitimacy in promoting and advancing a notion of African ‘peacekeeping’ that is divorced from the international community and that is devoid of common doctrines, lexicon, procedures and rules of engagement for enforcement action.

Despite the authorisation of the MINURCA mission in the CAR during April 1998, it is apparent that UN peacekeeping in Africa is on the decline. The small UN observer missions in Western Sahara and Sierra Leone have not yet made a meaningful difference to peace and security in these two countries, though there is some hope that the MINURSO mission may be brought to successful closure by the middle of next year. The clearest indication of UN disengagement from Africa, however, is to be found in the events that led to the termination of UN involvement in the Angolan peace process in February 1999 — leaving the people of that country to another phase of bloody civil war.

On the other hand, there has been some progress in training and equipping African armies for a peace support role, as evidenced by several large and expensive peacekeeping exercises over the past year. Yet, the major player in contemporary African peace operations — Nigeria — has been largely excluded from such assistance measures. Moreover, the forceful operations of ECOMOG in Sierra Leone and the ‘SADC coalitions’ in Lesotho and the DRC have borne little resemblance to the brand of ‘UN peacekeeping’ that is being espoused by the various foreign capacity-building initiatives. The recent NATO air blitz on Yugoslavia, under the mantle of ‘humanitarianism’, indicates that the West indeed accepts the need for forceful humanitarian intervention, but it is unlikely that it will use its ‘smart’ weapons to prevent genocide in Africa. As the Lesotho intervention proves, the West will also be reluctant to condemn more primitive forms of peace enforcement on the African continent.

While conflict situations in Africa will continue to elicit robust and often non-consensual military interventions, disunity among regional players and a lack of decisive coercive capabilities will mean that such interventions will also be protracted. It is also unlikely that the availability of resources for such endeavours will improve in any meaningful fashion, and the viability of future African peace support operations is more likely to depend on the ability of African armies to adapt to conditions of stringency than on largesse from the ‘donor community’.

The prospects of developing meaningful and legitimate peace support missions in Africa will depend on the ability of key political actors to reach consensus on the limits and scope of peace support. This, in turn, will depend upon the ability of military leaders to articulate a viable, internationally acceptable doctrine for the conduct of multilateral enforcement operations. It is only once this is accomplished that African military organisations, as part of a broader international effort, can gear themselves for the real peacekeeping challenges of the future.

This is an edited version of a paper presented at an IIR/ISS international workshop on Integrated military doctrine: Towards a global consensus on peace support operations, Stirin Castle, Czech Republic, 28-31 May 1999. It is published in support of Training for Peace, a project sponsored by Norway and executed by the ISS in partnership with the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) and the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD).

1 At the beginning of 1999, ten African countries supplied the bulk of the troops for the relatively small (and atypical) MINURCA peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic. Beyond this, the total commitment to UN peace operations came from a handful of African countries that were each contributing a few military observers and/or police officers to most of the ongoing UN observer and police assistance missions. Most notably present in this role are Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal.

2 E Hutchful, Peacekeeping under conditions of resource stringency: The Ghana Army in Liberia, paper read at the conference entitled From peacekeeping to complex emergencies? Peace support missions in Africa, jointly hosted by the South African Institute for International Affairs and the Institute for Security Studies, Johannesburg, 25 March 1999.

3 Multilateralism implies a commitment to the principles governing the conduct of relations among states, as stipulated in the UN Charter. In as much as it reflects a commitment to international principles, multilateralism tends to confer legitimacy on the military actions of nations — when the latter are authorised by the Security Council.

6 On 8 February 1997, MISAB deployed in Bangui, comprising a total of some 800 troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon and Mali, and later also from Senegal and Togo, under the military command of Gabon and with the logistical and financial support of France. The UN really became engaged on 6 August 1997, when the Security Council welcomed the operations of MISAB and authorised member states (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter) to provide support to MISAB.

7 As of 9 April 1999, the mission total was 1 257 personnel, comprising 1 073 troops, 24 civilian police, 100 support personnel and sixty staff observers. Contributors of personnel were Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Gabon, Portugal, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia. United Nations, Fifth Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic, S/1999/416, New York, 14 April 1999.

8 As of 26 January 1999, MINURSO had a mission total of 316 uniformed personnel, comprising 197 military observers, six staff officers, 87 troops and 26 civilian police observers; supported by international and local civilian staff. Military and police personnel were contributed to MINURSO by Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Honduras, Ireland, India, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Sweden, Uruguay, the US and Venezuela.

9 In May 1999, the UN Security Council decided to extend the UN Western Sahara mission’s mandate to 14 September. The decision was aimed at relaunching the voter identification process for the self-determination referendum due to take place in July 2000 in the former Spanish colony disputed by Morocco and the Polisario Front. The process has been postponed several times since 1991 because of diverging views between Morocco and the Polisario Front over the voter identification process. The UN Secretary-General is to submit a revised schedule to the Security Council, as well as a financial report on the cost of the referendum according to the settlement plan and the agreements entered by the two parties. Western Sahara UN mission extended to September, Panafrican News Agency, 16 May 1999.

16 See, for example, E K Aning, The international dimensions of internal conflict: The Case of Liberia and West Africa, Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, June 1997; Y Gershoni, War without end and an end to war: The prolonged War in Liberia and Sierra Leone, African Studies Review, 40(3), December 1997; R A Mortimer, ECOMOG, Liberia, and regional security in West Africa, in E J Keller & D Rothchild (eds), Africa in the new international order: Rethinking state sovereignty and regional security, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, Colorado, 1996; E Nwokedi, Regional integration and regional security: ECOMOG, Nigeria, and the Liberian crisis, Center d’Etudes d’Afrique Noire, Bordeaux, 1992; M Vogt, Nigeria in Liberia: Historical and political analysis of ECOMOG, in M Vogt & E E Ekoko (eds), Nigeria in international peacekeeping 1960-1992, Malthouse Press, Oxford, 1993; K P Magyar & E Conteh-Morgan (eds), Peacekeeping in Africa: ECOMOG in Liberia, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1998.

25 K P Magyar, Conclusion: Liberia’s peacekeeping lessons for Africa, in Magyar & Conteh-Morgan, op. cit., p. 174.

26 On 28 January 1997, the UN Secretary-General eventually outlined plans to send a 720-person UN peacekeeping force to Sierra Leone. The force was to monitor and verify the cease-fire and the withdrawal of foreign troops, the disarmament and demobilisation of Revolutionary United Front (RUF) fighters, and the withdrawal to barracks and eventual demobilisation of government troops not required for normal security. Although the Sierra Leone government pledged to co-operate with the operation, the mission was shelved due to lack of consent by the RUF.

30 The notion of SADC assuming a role in subregional security maintenance and conflict management was accepted by the SADC Heads of State at the 28 June 1996 Summit in Gaborone. The meeting decided to create a SADC Organ for Politics, Defence and Security, which "... would allow more flexibility and timely response, at the highest level, to sensitive and potentially explosive situations." For a detailed account of the evolution of SADC as a regional security structure, see M Malan, SADC and sub-regional security: Unde Venis et Quo Vadis?, ISS Monograph, 19, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, February 1998.

49 The US/NATO reaction to the ‘Kosovo crisis’, for example, clearly demonstrates the fact that the White House places much greater value on the lives of some 2 000 Kosovars than it did on those of half a million Africans during the Rwandan crisis of April 1994. This difference, one would hope, is political (and not based on racist or ethnocentric views of humankind).